The Tao of the Backup Catcher

Playing Baseball for the Love of the Game

Tim Brown

Almost every baseball team has a backup catcher. He’s not the everyday guy. He’s not the star behind the plate. He’s the one who plays when the starter needs a rest.

He may play the day game after a night game. Or he steps in because a particular pitcher likes throwing to him. Sometimes he spends the whole game in the bullpen, catching one warm-up toss after another. And make no mistake: catching is brutal. It’s the hardest defensive job in baseball.

Squatting for three hours. Taking foul tips off the mask, off the shoulders, off the thighs. Managing the mental side of the game, too: memorizing hitting patterns, watching base runners, working the umpire’s strike zone. It’s punishing on the body and exhausting for the brain.

And usually, the backup catcher isn’t much of a hitter. If he were, he’d be starting.

So why do these guys matter? Because the ones who stick around — the ones who build careers as backup catchers — bring something more. As a major league general manager explains, ‘Every other person on the field, on the roster, is there based wholly on talent. The backup catcher is also evaluated on a sixth tool – and that is what kind of teammate they are.’

Those guys are the heart of this book: the guys who are never going to be the stars, whose play is fine, but who still bring a necessary something to the game.

Maybe he’s the guy who keeps the clubhouse loose or the one who knows how to calm a nervous rookie on the mound. He could be observant, picking up on the tells from the opposition dugout — or he’s the glue, the teammate who shows up every day with humor and humility, putting the team first. In a sport obsessed with numbers, the backup catcher is a reminder that not everything valuable can be measured.

This book revolves around one backup catcher: Erik Kratz. He played nineteen pro seasons with fourteen different organizations. Kratz caught everything from minor league hopefuls in AAA to October pitchers on the big stage. And through him, author Tim Brown introduces us to the larger fraternity of backup catchers, the men who love a game that doesn’t always love them back.

You get the nuts and bolts — what’s it like to call a game, to read hitters, to manage the ego of a 21-year-old man who was throwing fine five days ago, but today, can’t seem to get the ball over the plate. You learn how a bullpen runs. But you also get the heart: stories of showing up, swallowing pride, serving the team.

It’s inspiring and impressive, but it’s not sentimental. Funny and warm, it feels honest. Backup catchers are frequently good storytellers, and this book is rich with their voices.

Brown spent decades covering Major League Baseball — first with the Los Angeles Times and then with Yahoo Sports. He not only captures the character of the backup catcher, he reframes success from their perspective. And he makes a compelling argument that baseball isn’t just about the win-loss stat, that ‘backup’ isn’t a demotion, it’s a calling.

If you like sports books that take you inside the clubhouse, and you want to meet the kind of people you’d like to drink beer with after the game, this is the book for you.

For ten or fifteen years, baseball is just baseball. You just keep signing up. If you’re any good at all, it keeps happening until there are no more sign-up sheets or good reasons to play. High school is over, and it’s time to go to college or into the family business cutting meat or something. Or college is over, and it’s time to grow up and be responsible and make something of yourself. To be pragmatic. Dang.

Pro ball is something different. This is how an hour of pro ball becomes two, how one season becomes nineteen of them, how a whim or a dream or the thinnest sliver of an opening becomes a pretty good chunk of a lifetime. When every phone call or tap on the shoulder — ‘Hey Kratzie…’ — could end the whole thing, which began so long ago it seems like it happened to someone else. Like you’re just now hearing the story yourself. — Tim Brown

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